The problem is that the people of Puerto Rico have to be something, and it’s not totally obvious that there’s anything more popular than what they have right now. Not every political question has a solution that makes a majority happy, and an unhappy status quo is a lot easier to provide than an unhappy change.
Britain is dealing with the same sort of problem: A majority of its electorate voted for the status of Not-In-The-EU, which is a category that includes both Norway and North Korea, with basically zero discussion beforehand of what kind of Not-In-The-EU they wanted. Successive governments have committed to being Not-In-The-EU but after four years they still have not quite figured out what that will look like. And I suspect that, like with Brexit, the only outcome that would actually make the majority happy would be a magical picking-and-choosing option where all of the positive benefits of the different options are combined without any of the negative consequences (e.g. Puerto Rico is an independent country with its own international relations that has one-way open borders with the USA, favorable treatment in US taxation, and a vote in all American elections).
Massive change, yes, but massive change that can be walked back in a few years time, assuming that the UK comes to it’s senses. There are no “take backsies” in statehood.
There may not be any one thing, but status quo was the loser in the 2012 referendum. In these sorts of multiple choice situations, ranked voting should be the norm. If you can’t have your first pick, what’s your second, then eliminate until you have a clear winner. I dunno, maybe you could do it in two successive elections. First election, do you want to stay a territory? If “No” wins, then you start the hard work and 2-4 years later, you have a ranked choice of statehood, COFA (with details), full independence, status quo (the “now that I see the details, I’ve changed my mind”). If status quo wins, no referendums for, say, 20 years. If something else wins, it’s implemented.
I think you might be overestimating the EU’s willingness to let the UK back in the club after this. Certainly, even if they came back in, they would never get the terms they had before - the pound would have to go at a minimum.
Well, an order for a referendum goes through their territorial legislature. So, their elected officials I suppose.
And guess what? I’m embarrassed to say we are not up to date. They had a yes/no vote on statehood this frigging election. The hitch? A “no” vote is supposed to automatically trigger negotiations for independence or free association.
Guess they agree with you. People shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the status quo.
That referendum was what started the “no clear consensus” discussion. 52% (yes for statehood) of 52% (turnout for the question) has apparently been deemed insufficiently enthusiastic for many of the participants in this thread.
They have, so far, been unwilling to actually state an acceptable metric of enthusiasm that can be measured in an objective way other than that 90% of the population voting yes would be definitive. This is apparently based on that being Hawaii’s vote (the last vote of a territory for statehood). It has not been made clear what percentage of the turnout would be required to meet the threshold (apparently Hawaii’s was quite high - possibly because US military personnel stationed in the Islands for at least a year were allowed to vote).
Well, if you want a number, I’d prefer north of 60% But I don’t get a vote. Neither do you. That’s kind of the thing, this is just a philosophical question to us. The fact that they have long been locked with pretty close to 50-50 on statehood for years makes me think forcing the issue is a bad idea.
That is an excellent first-cut suggestion for a process. For this issue or for almost any other issue that is a) far reaching, b) requires considerable effort to plan and implement, and ) difficult to reverse.
The fact that so far the PR people, parties, and legislatures working over decades have been unable or unwilling to adopt such a process says gamesmanship works “better” for their individual parochial interests. Note I mean no disrespect to PR specifically in this; Brexit equally didn’t have a coherent process. Neither have most of the EU treaty votes. Politics is a very hard game to play with long-term foresightedness.
I genuinely wonder how much the terms of association matter to individual PR citizens, and how much it’s just a convenient wedge issue chosen by parties to divide the populace into groups the parties can then rely upon as folks vote for their team T-shirt.
Another consideration.
The public (any public) is famously uneducatable. If the USA and PR had a long history of alternative/ranked choice voting, it would be just fine to deliver important questions to that public via a ranked choice question. I deeply wish we did have that long history and ranked choice was used in all elections.
But to have ranked choice voting first be used on something that significant and important would almost guarantee that the vote as honestly counted was not in fact an accurate tally of the the actual will of the people. The error bars due to incompetent voting might easily overwhelm the signal of which answer came first.
Said another way, switching to using ranked choice voting for everything is one of the many prereqs to having a reliable = sane outcome on a really big question.
Taking YamatoTwinkie’s number - so if statehood gets 66(ish)% of the vote, then PR would be a state (but really probably not - it still has to get through Congress). But what if it’s more complicated:
Statehood gets 65%. No gets 35%.
Statehood gets 49%. No gets 51%.
Statehood gets 35%. No gets 65%.
What then? Is status quo the only other option? Or do we just keep going with other options at yes/no votes until something hits 66%? In what order? Is it Statehood/No, COFA/No, Full Independence/No? Or some other order? Who decides the structure and schedule? What if EVERY option other than status quo exceeds 50%, but is less than 66%?
@LSLGuy’s excellent discussion of the problems with suddenly introducing ranked choice is certainly a concern that shouldn’t be discounted, but we can’t reasonably distill a 4-choice question into simple y/n options or we are essentially saying the status quo wins by default. And the Puerto Rican people haven’t picked the status quo by majority or plurality in 18 years with 3 chances to do it.
A question structured that way is either the work of a moron or a duplicitous asshat. Those questions never, ever work. Here is a question that would work:
“Should the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico be a state? / ¿Debería Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico ser un estado?”
Apparently not though. The 52% who answered yes to that question aren’t enough - according to several of the posters here. They want more. Somewhere north of 66% seems to be the range that will be deemed a clear answer (for some, 95% has also been mentioned). Anything else is murky.
You’re really pushing the bounds of honest interpretation. I’m not saying anything is murky. I’m saying it’s a question with entrenched views locally and I’d prefer a greater consensus on a big change. Tell me why that’s wrong, not your version.
I didn’t actually mention you. Your number was “north of 60%” which is actually lower than the number I gave thus implying that I was excluding you from that group. But your threshold was reached on a direct question: Should Puerto Rico continue to remain a territory? 62% said “No”. That should end the discussion on the status quo. It’s not an option anymore.
So, if we accept that, we’re down to a big change and there are three realistic options - Independence, COFA, and Statehood. And if none of those in direct questions get the desired super-majority, you’ve put status quo back in as the default winner, even though they met your threshold for requesting big change - just not a specific big change. I think ranked choice is the way to cut that Gordian Knot, but I’d be open to discussing other options.
Or we accept that the will of the majority of the Puerto Rican people means exactly squat as regards their relationship to the US. We decide, not them.
That’s like looking at the results of a poll on US healthcare that asks “Should the ACA continue to remain as-is?”, seeing clear majorities for “no”, and deciding it needs to be scrapped.
Of course, half of the “no” respondents want it to be replaced with a completely government run Medicare For All system, and the other half want a 100% free market approach. There’s no way to reconcile these two positions.
Okay, I can see that. I assume you’re in favor of the filibuster in the US Senate? Why doesn’t the House have one? The logical road you’re headed down is that no change should be implemented without some super-majority, but we allow that all the time.
I would argue that the appointment of the last three USSC Justices will have a much greater impact on American lives than Puerto Rico not being a territory and all 3 were all confirmed on percentages lower than Puerto Rico’s request for a change in 2012. Hell, 2 of the 3 didn’t even meet the 52% threshold PR just achieved in the 2020 referendum.
It’s funny you should use ACA as your example though. At the time of its passing, the ACA was, according to CNN, opposed by 59% of those surveyed (to answer your 2nd point - the split was 43/13 too liberal/not liberal enough). Then the House passed it by a margin of (the first time) 50.5%/49.5% (220 to 215). On 2nd pass (to accept Senate Amendment) it crept up to 50.8% (219 to 212). Was that sufficient for such a major change? Based on your logic, the answer is no, but now it’s the status quo and is thus afforded greater protection than the system it replaced was.
It depends how you define “major change”. For me, a big thing is how easy it is to reverse a change. The more difficult it is to reverse a change, the higher it pings on the “major change” scale.
There have been a total of 115 Supreme Court justices. 106 of them have left the bench at some point.
There have been innumerable statutes passed in the past 2+ centuries, and they can always be repealed by votes of 50% + 1 in both houses. The ACA could be repealed tomorrow if there was political will.
Since 1789, the number of states in the US has gradually increased to 50 states. There have been zero states which have left the Union, and over half a million people died in the dispute over that issue.
To my mind, that makes the decision to admit a new state one of the most significant and major changes possible under the US Constitution, because it is nigh on impossible to reverse.
If a decision is almost impossible to reverse, then I think a high certainty is needed to show that it is in fact the popular will.
And by the same token, in that vote, over 60% also said no to becoming a state, and over 60% also said no to independence, so by that logic, all options should be off the table. Which is absurd.
Fact is, deciding between three or more alternatives is, in general, a really hard problem. Sometimes even impossible.
All that said, most of this discussion has been between people without knowledge of this most recent vote. Sometimes it’s hard or impossible to decide between three alternatives, but not always. And while I agree that there should be a strong consensus before a measure as extreme as adding a new state, I would maintain that 52%, out of three possible choices, does in fact represent a strong consensus. Or at least as close to one as one can get. No matter how you slice the ranked choices, any number over 50% means that that’s definitely overall the preferred choice.